a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Off Day Odds and Ends – Spring Cleaning

–Love this: During his weekly interview on 1280 The Zone, Ronnie B had this to say about playing defense: “I think defense is something that you want to do. It’s effort, it’s all about heart. So you got to want to play defense and I take pride in doing that, trying to go against some of the best guys in the NBA.” Wish all the guys on the team felt that way–because we would be the NBA champions.

–Speaking of Ronnie B and playing D, sltrib published an interesting article today on deflections, which is a stat that the Jazz have been tracking since the prehistoric (pre-Sloan) era. According to the article, AK holds the team record of 24 deflections in a game and has led the team in deflections for seven straight years, including in ’04-’05 when he only played 41 games.

Ronnie B seems poised to take the crown this year, with Sap coming in second. Most interesting to me was Ronnie B’s talk about jinxing: “It’s kind of crazy because we don’t want to jinx ourselves like that. If we have a game where we have a lot of deflections, we don’t really try to talk about it too much because during the next game, that’s when you mess around and have like two or three.”

Jinxes. They exist and they’re powerful.

–At the Leapin’ Leaners charity event, the auction had concluded when DWill grabbed the mike and built an item out of thin air to raise money for LHM Charities–a foursome with KK (we’re talking about golf here, btw), with Masha caddying and AK driving the cart. DWill the basketball guy is a great, great player to build your franchise around. DWill the person is pretty great to have around as well. I’ve never been to Utah, but I can’t say enough about how he’s made his presence felt in the community and how awesome it is, from a fan’s perspective, to know that he’s made his home in the SLC.

–Speaking of Leapin’ Leaners, where was MoAl’s jersey in the display? Is it somewhere in there, or are the Jazz trying to tell us what we already know?

–Speaking of MoAl, he and KK2 combined for 46 points to lift the Flash to a 109-82 victory Friday night. KK2 had 21 points on 10-14 shooting and also had 8 boards and 3 blocks in his Flash debut. I’m just going to say it. The Koof is as close to Mark Eaton as we’ve gotten since–yeah, you got it–since Mark Eaton. Meanwhile, Fess is back with the Jazz and says that “‘it’s always good’ to be with the NBA team instead of in the D-League and that he “miss only AK and Coach Sloan.” LOL.

–Speaking of Coach Sloan, Mo Williams, aka the-reason-we-matched-for-CJ, recently talked about what he learned from Jerry (I’m citing this article even though the interviewer was Peter “Make Stuff Up if There’s Nothing to Write About” Vescey): “Jerry taught me how to be a point guard. To think versus rely simply on instincts…time and possession…teammates needing to be spoon-fed…not giving the ball to a big man on the break unless he has a free lane…creating space–separation–which is the object of the pick-and-roll, and then reading and reacting.” We hear a lot about what a great coach Jerry is, and not nearly enough about what a great teacher he is.

–Speaking of former Jazz players, Stockton to Malone now ranks #1 on the Biggest Bromance in Sports All-World Power Rankings. Stock and Karl: “The definitive sports bromance.”

–And finally: Gee NBA and David Stern, don’t let absolute power go to your head or anything. The NBA fined Mark Cuban $25,000 for having the ridiculous, appalling audacity to tweet, “how do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground ?” For frak’s sake, leave Mark Cuban alone. The reason that the NBA has no credibility is because the refs have no accountability. They can do and say whatever they like, and the NBA will fine the heck out of anyone that dares to look at them wrong or express their opinions. Whatever happnened to the “more transparent” officiating policy they promised fans at the beginning of the season? Swept under the rug along with Tim Donaghy’s existence and anti-flopping rules.